Video: Most of Germany's fighter jets (and tanks and ships and helicopters) are broken.

If you thought the US Department of Defense's procurement adventures with the F-35 and other big-budget weapons systems are bad, you might want to check out what's going on in Europe, where defense procurement battles have left most of the German Luftwaffe grounded for lack of parts.

Last week, at the annual Charlemagne Prize ceremony in Aachen, Germany—in which French President Emmanuel Macron was recognized for his efforts on behalf of European unity—German Prime Minister Angela Merkel pronounced that Europe could no longer depend on the United States for its protection. "Europe has to take its destiny into its own hands," Merkel said. "That is the task of the future."

Merkel has given this message before. But if Europe is to take its destiny into its own hands any time soon, Germany has a lot of work to do—the Bundeswehr, Germany's defense ministry, is suffering from multiple readiness crises in a culmination of years of cost-shaving and poor management decisions. And the latest symptom to emerge of that crisis is the dwindling number of actually functional fighter jets that the Luftwaffe, Germany's air force, can actually call combat ready. For the Eurofighter Typhoon, Germany's main fighter aircraft, that number is four—out of a total of 128.

According to a report in Der Spiegel, the Bundeswehr has claimed in an official report to the Bundestag (Germany's legislature) that 39 Typhoon fighters were designated as ready for missions last year. But that report named any aircraft that was capable of flying as being "ready." In fact, only 10 aircraft currently have all their systems functioning, because of a problem that has plagued the defensive aid subsystem (DASS) of Germany's version of the Typhoon.

One component of the DASS is a wing pod that contains the aircraft's electronic countermeasures (ECM) equipment—its gear for jamming the radar of incoming missiles—and parts of the aircraft's electronic support measure systems, which include radar lock warning and target identification.

During the development of the Typhoon, Germany decided to break off from the Eurofighter consortium and fund the development of a domestically built DASS by Daimler Aerospace (DASA). Eventually Germany re-entered the fold, and DASA was absorbed into the European defense conglomerate EADS. But the money-saving maneuvering has continued, as the Bundestag strove to reduce stock in repair parts and opt for "just-in-time" ordering.

Unfortunately, the DASS pods on Germany's Typhoons have been failing because of coolant leaks. And the supplier for the part needed to repair the leak is no longer in business. As the rest of Eurofighters' customers are upgrading their DASS systems to the Praetorian DASS from the Italian defense company Leonardo, the factory for the part was sold—and Germany, which did not opt for the upgrade, is now left without a supplier.

Cost-cutting procurement strategies have caused problems elsewhere over the past year for the Bundeswehr:

The German Navy has had to refuse delivery of the first of its new class of frigates after the ship failed sea trials, and only five of the Navy's existing 13 frigates were capable of being deployed.

Only 12 of 62 Tiger attack helicopters and 16 of Germany's 72 CH-53 cargo helicopters were available for exercises and operations last year; the rest were grounded for maintenance.

At any time over the last year, only three of the Bundeswehr Airbus A400M transport aircraft were ready to fly.

The only saving grace for the Bundeswehr is that with the wind-down of NATO support in Afghanistan, there's no immediate combat mission for the German military. And as Der Spiegel's Matthias Gebauer was told by a Bundeswehr source, "We can say with a good conscience that large parts of the [German armed forces] are mission ready, because there is currently no mission."

Sean Gallagher
Sean is Ars Technica's IT and National Security Editor. A former Navy officer, systems administrator, and network systems integrator with 20 years of IT journalism experience, he lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland. Emailsean.gallagher@arstechnica.com//Twitter@thepacketrat

559 Reader Comments

That's the sad part. Trump is just right in the basics. Russia is resurgent and Germany's army is barely working. And Merkel tried to sell him that he should be happy if the GDP percentage increases AT ALL. So when it comes to style Trump is never right when it comes to the basics he is right most of the time.

You would have thought that fixing a coolant leak ought not to be beyond the capabilities of the organic engineering associated with the defence ministries of a G7 state with a €40 billion budget: "can't find the part" is an excuse from a not-very-good garage not from the Luftwaffe.

Seems like something you would rather have as an open secret instead of a reported matter. At least when its not official, you can hope to cast some doubt on the situation. But these sort of things always get out anyways. You have a lot of contractors involved from start to finish.

That's the sad part. Drumpf is just right in the basics. Russia is resurgent and Germany's army is barely working. And Merkel tried to sell him that he should be happy if the GDP percentage increases AT ALL. So when it comes to style Drumpf is never right when it comes to the basics he is right most of the time.

You would have thought that fixing a coolant leak ought not to be beyond the capabilities of the organic engineering associated with the defence ministries of a G7 state with a €40 billion budget: "can't find the part" is an excuse from a not-very-good garage not from the Luftwaffe.

This is only an educated guess, but we're likely not talking human-friendly temperatures here. Lots of missile-warning gear is keyed off of various infrared bands, many of which (historically) used terrible open-loop cryogenic cooling systems. Closed-loop replacements are not low-tech gear; we're not talking about your car radiator.

Regarding the broader story, the "peace dividend" at the end of the cold war absolutely was and should be real. But it is (was) important to not construe "peace dividend" as "peace panic sell-off". Defense is fundamentally a costly business, and a core role of the state.

That's the sad part. Trump is just right in the basics. Russia is resurgent and Germany's army is barely working. And Merkel tried to sell him that he should be happy if the GDP percentage increases AT ALL. So when it comes to style Trump is never right when it comes to the basics he is right most of the time.

I wouldn't go with "right most of the time" or even "part of the time". How about manufacturing diplomatic crisises on a constant basis only to backtrack on his original tact to attempt to fix it. He got lucky with Korea. He might get lucky with China. But being a solid 1 for 5 isn't "most of the time". When it comes to domestic issues? Yeah, let's not even go there.

That sounds like a problem they could fix easily if they wanted to, and one they don't plan to fix until it is necessary because they have other priorities.

I've never been a fan of the US strategy of being "Combat ready" during entire decades. First of all, it's a huge waste of money, and worse still, it "forces" governments following that strategy to manufacture war conflicts to test and renovate their equipment and justify their strategy. Not an aspect of this world that I'm particularly proud of.

Anyway, going back to the main topic... To be honest, if at some point in time Germany needs to use those fighters against Russia as the article implies, all this talk about having 4 or 30 jets ready would be a tiny little problem, considering Russia can nuke Europe out of existence.

The Tornado is featured in the video as well. I didn't pick the still, though...while I wrote the video script and did the audio, and produced the video with my video guy @Kage_The_Mage, CNI produced the player...and chose the wrong jet for the still.

Seems like something you would rather have as an open secret instead of a reported matter. At least when its not official, you can hope to cast some doubt on the situation. But these sort of things always get out anyways. You have a lot of contractors involved from start to finish.

Who cares? There is exactly zero threat to Germany at the moment so our military being in the dumpster is only good to avoid any further foreign adventures that Merkel can come up with.

Budget should be cut further. That way we can at least get something useful for that money instead of bunch of grown ups playing at war, badly. Add to that reports of rampant neo-Nazi sympathisers in Bundeswehr and the entire thing should be just shut down and started from scratch.

Seems like something you would rather have as an open secret instead of a reported matter. At least when its not official, you can hope to cast some doubt on the situation. But these sort of things always get out anyways. You have a lot of contractors involved from start to finish.

Who cares? There is exactly zero threat to Germany at the moment so our military being in the dumpster is only good to avoid any further foreign adventures that Merkel can come up with.

Budget should be cut further. That way we can at least get something useful for that money instead of bunch of grown ups playing at war, badly. Add to that reports of rampant neo-Nazi sympathisers in Bundeswehr and the entire thing should be just shut down and started from scratch.

Seems like something you would rather have as an open secret instead of a reported matter. At least when its not official, you can hope to cast some doubt on the situation. But these sort of things always get out anyways. You have a lot of contractors involved from start to finish.

Who cares? There is exactly zero threat to Germany at the moment so our military being in the dumpster is only good to avoid any further foreign adventures that Merkel can come up with.

Budget should be cut further. That way we can at least get something useful for that money instead of bunch of grown ups playing at war, badly. Add to that reports of rampant neo-Nazi sympathisers in Bundeswehr and the entire thing should be just shut down and started from scratch.

Who cares is my point. While I don't seriously think anything would happen. The best time to pose a threat out of nowhere is when you know this sort of readiness status. It's a small chip on the table that means Germany will want to stay refrain from raising its hand in certain talks. it's easier to talk tough when everyone know's where you stand. Budgets are a reasonable topic to discuss and there are many opinions on how to deal with military readiness.

That's the sad part. Drumpf is just right in the basics. Russia is resurgent and Germany's army is barely working. And Merkel tried to sell him that he should be happy if the GDP percentage increases AT ALL. So when it comes to style Drumpf is never right when it comes to the basics he is right most of the time.

I really do not like Drumpf; he is 99% horrible.

However, he got the whole "NATO is using us as a crutch" right.

So, one in a hundred.

Considering that the US also uses NATO as a tool for its foreign policy it's not unreasonable to think that the US should pay most of the bill... the US puts money into NATO but also gets money from NATO, not sure its a bad deal since it keeps US arms industry going and going...

As a German (Navy) medical officer I feel somewhat ashamed to actually read about the current state of our troops on ArsTechnica.

That being said a lot of the current problems come down to:

a) a lot of ridiculous safety requirements. Or how did one of the helicopter pilots during Operation Enduring Freedom put it: when there is like a grain of sand in the air we have to call the Americans because they can still fly with their Black Hawks.

b) The German military has been a sink of money to keep jobs afloat. Be it for ridiculous weapon projects that run for 20+ years and each new government adds new stuff which balloons the project or to actually give a lot of former state employed people a new job mostly in logistics. Believe me, we tried to get a new wire for our ship (which weight a few tons and need a crane to get them on board) and three times in a row those highly intelligent people sent us already defective wire.

I won't even bother responding to certain commentators, but the idea of "there is no threat right now, so we can let the military languish until a threat appears" was an idea that was tried and found wanting.

One of the many shitty things about defense policy is that your potential adversaries usually don't send you a calendar request for some notional 2023 geopolitical crisis.

You would have thought that fixing a coolant leak ought not to be beyond the capabilities of the organic engineering associated with the defence ministries of a G7 state with a €40 billion budget: "can't find the part" is an excuse from a not-very-good garage not from the Luftwaffe.

This is only an educated guess, but we're likely not talking human-friendly temperatures here. Lots of missile-warning gear is keyed off of various infrared bands, many of which (historically) used terrible open-loop cryogenic cooling systems. Closed-loop replacements are not low-tech gear; we're not talking about your car radiator.

Yes, but we're not talking about a random Skoda garage either; closed-loop coolers have been developed by most of the space agencies in Europe for their IR telescope missions, if you can run for three years at the L2 point then running for eight hours in a plane is not obviously impractical.

America has a strong tendency to use its military to subsidise its high-tech civilian industries, and Germany was clearly trying to do much the same with Daimler.

Seems like something you would rather have as an open secret instead of a reported matter. At least when its not official, you can hope to cast some doubt on the situation. But these sort of things always get out anyways. You have a lot of contractors involved from start to finish.

Who cares? There is exactly zero threat to Germany at the moment so our military being in the dumpster is only good to avoid any further foreign adventures that Merkel can come up with.

Budget should be cut further. That way we can at least get something useful for that money instead of bunch of grown ups playing at war, badly. Add to that reports of rampant neo-Nazi sympathisers in Bundeswehr and the entire thing should be just shut down and started from scratch.

Wow, you aren't even trying to hide it any more comrade.

Ah the comments from FBI bots. No wonder you all come out of the woodwork as soon as Sean makes one more of his "murder is good" articles about military.

Not sure what kind of crazy ass news you are watching in US but Germany is not under attack and there are no threats towards it. Why the hell should my tax be wasted on worthless military when it can be used to build more homes, better schools, better healthcare and so on. The things that actually would improve lives of average person living in Germany. Military can at best go join in US led murder campaigns and I would prefer that my tax doesn't go for such things.

It’s better to have a functional military and not need it then need it and not have it. You can’t depend on Uncle Sam for a military and be a client country in the EU at the same time.

I won't even bother responding to certain commentators, but the idea of "there is no threat right now, so we can let the military languish until a threat appears" was an idea that was tried and found wanting.

One of the many shitty things about defense policy is that your potential adversaries usually don't send you a calendar request for some notional 2023 geopolitical crisis.

Certain commentators are known Russian cheerleaders, even if they live in other countries.